"I’m playing Mycroft in the sequel to the Sherlock Holmes film Guy Ritchie directed with Robert Downey Jr., and that sort of part is fun. But just once in a while to play a genuine all round sort of lead figure with complexity and tragedy and wit and all the sort of things that Oscar [Wilde] had was a once in a lifetime thrill."

For those unfamiliar with Mycroft (guilty), a quick trip to Wikipedia reveals that in the story "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter" Sherlock said of his older brother, "He has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterward proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points."

So Mycroft is smarter than Sherlock, but cripplingly lazy. Sounds like our kind of guy.

And physically speaking Fry, best known to U.S. audiences as Deitrich in "V for Vendetta," is perfect for Mycroft, who is described in "The Bruce Partington Plans":

Heavily built and massive, there was a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in the figure, but above this unwieldy frame there was perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-gray, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant mind.